......But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

:-)- i am just curious to check whether this is the first community revolt? Is this web 2.0 democracy in shaping or union formation with in democracy? I am very new to social media so experts may have their opinion to share with us.

If I were Digg I would say: OK post this damn code if you want but sign your post with your name.

The users shout "censorship" from their comfortable chair of anonymity and let the site owner face the consequences. If you take a look at most of the entries you will notice that most people are very eager to preserve their anonymity by using flickr or even editing wikipedia entries to cover their own behind.

This digg story shows, that users can bounce back and i have to say that i like it!

The users loudly demand Digg should stand up for their freedom of speech and take all the fire while they stay behind in their trenches of anonymity and duck for cover. That's what I do not like in this case. You cannot demand that others take risks you are not willing to take yourself.

You cannot demand that others take risks you are not willing to take yourself.

I could agree except for the fact the users of that website are not sharing in the profits of it. The users in essence are your customers, just like any business you have to keep them happy or they will go elsewhere.

I wouldn't doubt that the owners changed their minds not specifically because of user demnds but to avert the loss of earnings in the future.

The users who get traffic are benefitting. Perhaps even financially. Don't forget Digg is popular for much the same reason google is. It sends people traffic for free.

Now I understand better the reason for all this anti-drm stuff. But still, if people don't like Digg anymore because say they suck on this one policy, fine, go elsewhere. But to stay there actively just to try and deface it? I don't think that's right.

Digg is Kevin's site to run the way he wants. The public don't know what happens behind the scenes. Legally and how the people behind them may push them in certain directions...it's a lot easier to judge anonym and w/o knowledge. I do feel bad for Kevin. At least a little bit. (But no matter what he'll make plenty of money from Digg, so the compassion is tempered ;))

The mob is the mob and the mob will win everytime. At least on the net where they can't call the army and the tanks.

...fine, go elsewhere. But to stay there actively just to try and deface it?

I can agree with you there but how else to get the point across? One very active protest certainly isn't as compelling as hundreds of them.

This is an issue that has yet to truly boil over, as far as digg goes it's one of those "wrong place, wrong time" deals. People are going to lash out at whatever they can, digg unfortuantely for them was the easiest target.

:-)- i am just curious to check whether this is the first community revolt? Is this web 2.0 democracy in shaping or union formation with in democracy? I am very new to social media so experts may have their opinion to share with us.

I've seen it happen on one of my forums before. A mod removed a post they thought was inappropriate on a hot topic. The community responded questioning the validity of the site... eventually the post was restored.

It was definitely a learning lesson for me... but the important thing was that they community forgave us once we did the right thing and restored the post with an apologee.

Digg will live on and grow to be even stronger from this event... IMHO.

It may be bending to the will of the mob, but it also might indicate they took the time to examine the validity of the DMCA notice.

A community operator needs to respond to such a notice in a timely manner, and may not have time for legal analysis or a lot of reflection. In this case, the users forced Digg to evaluate the action. With the number being everywhere on the Web, and with Digg being more of an aggregator of content posted elsewhere, I presume the judged their liability to be minimal.

Digg doesn't owe anyone anything. Many people tend to forget a non-monetary benefit for the USERs that they themself probably wouldn't want to admit, ever. Digg is, as any other web 2.0 community site, keeping a lot of people from feeling a worthless, friendless, lonely shadow, and these people usually don't even recognize the role of the internet / Web 2.0 as their saviour. Then there's the SEOs, marketers, journalists who make a direct profit off of digg traffic so, no. It's even, digg doesn't owe anyone anything.

Those who insist on this rhetoric of freedom with a foaming mouth are... having delusions.

I don't like drm either, but warez goes to the warez site, news to the news site. There's nothing but false stances in this news.

You know, those comments... Oh, he "got the balls" allright... on display at such a volatile place, he might get n****red fast. ( Ow? )

But I'm sure they're just trying to get past the storm to keep making tons of money...

So... I've concluded that most of the characters in this story are disgusting. What a relief.

Except poor kids in worse-off countries who can't access modern entertainment by other than pirated means. ( half serious )

I took a quick look just to see what this was all about (never visited Digg before this) and I honestly don't understand why people think "Freedom of Speech" applies here. For one thing, Digg is an independently-owned service and consequently has the right to limit, edit, or refuse posts on pretty much any criteria they like. Second, the companies using DRM have a perfect right to use it and expect it to remain secure - and users have no right to complain since they know full well that the DVD's and whatever are protected when they buy them. Why everyone is so down on protecting intellectual property and a company's ability to make profit is beyond me; how many new movies, music, or whatever would we have if nobody was making any money on them?

Why everyone is so down on protecting intellectual property and a company's ability to make profit is beyond me; how many new movies, music, or whatever would we have if nobody was making any money on them?

Well they haven't been able to protect anything yet and are still making boatloads of money. It's not the pirates or people passing files around on p2p they are hurting but your average consumer. I wholeheartedly agree they should be able to protect their content but it goes beyond that.

Attempts to prevent new technologies to reach the consumer and/or making it more expensive than needed are on the top of my list. The most current example is what is happening with HD-DVD and blu-ray right now.

I want you to look at your computer, unless you have a very recent machine it will not play protected HD-DVD discs. Now look at your monitor, is it HDCP compliant? Unless it's recent it's not, you need a new monitor to play this content including the cables. Are you an early adopter of HD television? You can't play these discs. It's not that it's not capable, it will play non protected content. Add to that all the licensing fees and you have quite a hefty bill to pay.

If you check <removed> and find the original thread you'll find that these numbers came about for the reasons stated above. To paraphrase the hacker "I went to play my new hd-dvd movie on my computer and couldn't so I hacked it." That's not his exact words but it's quite close.

I don't think titles will be kept exclusive to the newest medium, if they'd be, you'd be 100% right.

But they're not. You can still buy tapes, CDs, DVDs, and a lot of stuff is available on VHS. No one is forcing anyone to upgrade...

Which makes me wonder who is complaining and why. I'd like to have the latest stuff too, but knowing the prices, I always either wait, or buy some 1 month old returned goods instead ( *hint* ). Wow, the PROBLEMS people have...

This wasn't about drm or blu-ray or digg, but a lot of people completely losing it. Yelling freedom to be able to post illegally distributed information? Excuse me but... what the...!?

And Digg will fight for them? I've always thought this, but why not say it for once, perhaps I AM right on this:

Well, this just shows the puerile, teenage-nerd culture of Digg in all its glory. It's almost a parody: they're having a mass protest for the right to illegally burn DVDs! And they're doing it with a 32 digit hex code that is meaningless to most ordinary people.

If they'd protested against corruption, or poverty or war or something, maybe that would be interesting. But a hex code to help them engage in anarchic anti-capitalistic crime? What a dysfunctional culture that place has created.

Welcome to planet earth. I see you're not very familiar with our technology. The DRM has nothing, nothing whatever to do with copying. You can make as many copies as you like, of a DVD, without any special key or code: it's just a string of bits. And all of the copies, since they include the same string of bits, will work just like the original.

Repeat, this "DRM" ((that is, disgusting, repugnant, and malicious) DOES NOTHING WHATEVER TO BLOCK MAKING COPIES. The only thing it does, the ONLY thing it does, is to prevent people who own a legal copy from using their legal copy in a perfectly legal way: to watch the movie, which is what the DVD was sold for.

Removing the DRM thus makes the legally obtained copy easier to use for its legal purpose. And so, software infringers, which are much more in tune with their users than the Bloated Corporate Drones at Big Media Corporations, generally remove the DRM, because that makes a product that is much more desirable to consumers. But that's a completely different issue. I can infringe copyright freely without having the DRM removed--by distributing bit-perfect copies of the original. I can remove the DRM for my own legitimate use without infringing copyright.

Don't confuse the two issues. They have nothing to do with each other.

Welcome to planet earth. I see you're not very familiar with our technology. The DRM has nothing, nothing whatever to do with copying. You can make as many copies as you like, of a DVD, without any special key or code: it's just a string of bits. And all of the copies, since they include the same string of bits, will work just like the original.

You cannot make an exact duplicate without removing the encryption of a DVD which makes it not an exact duplicate.. The CSS is on a portion of the disc that cannot be written too by a regular DVD burner. Breaking the encryption BTW is illegal in US under any circumstances.

This is particularly true of HD-DVD's. They are tied to the hardware and/or software that plays them, hence the reason for my post above about your computer not being able to play them. The basics are the disc or the player has those numbers on it, they have to match up, it also insures any hardware is HDCP compliant from the drive to the screen. Anything in between and it won't play. Those numbers have been revoked, they won't work on future discs.

In other words if you currently have a HD-DVD hardware or software player it will not play future discs until you either upgrade the software or do a firmware update to the player. So everytime a title(s) get hacked be prepared to update.

But they're not. You can still buy tapes, CDs, DVDs, and a lot of stuff is available on VHS. No one is forcing anyone to upgrade...

VHS is dead so its irrelevant and they want to get video off of DVD ASAP because it's completely unsecure. When you had the jump from VHS to DVD you still had a market for the the players and media for those existing devices and videos. This is different, DVD's can be played in a HD-DVD player so they can force a format change providing the players are cheap enough. DVD will drop off the face of the earth if they become popular IMO.

That's not the reason for the protest, though there's clearly a second group with that agenda. There's also a less strident effort to post the key in as many places as possible - in fairly steathy ways that doesn't alert the management of other sites. But THAT effort has been ongoing for months.

The protest is over digg's management censoring posts critical of their own actions. This has been alleged on numerous occasions, with the "straw that broke the camel's back" being removal of posts critical of digg's removal of the key.

The protesters allege that such posts have been removed by management, rather than simply being "dugg" by the normal digg voting system.

The protest TAKES THE FORM of posting the key, but it is ABOUT removal of posts critical of digg's decision to remove posts with the key.

Well, first of all, I think that freedom of speech is so ingrained in most Americans (and I assume most digg users are American) that they assume that it applies in places where it does not. And, largely, it is treated as so.

But, while some of the protesters may be inappropriately using the term, "freedom of speech" really isn't the issue here.

The issue is that, according to the protesters, digg management has been quietly censoring articles in violation of their stated policies. There is a growing feeling that the digg voting system is, and always has been, a sham.

BTW, I am not a digg user (I just don't "get it" - I don't see what is useful about the site...) nor particularly a proponent of the anti-DRM folk. This is simply my read of the situation from what I have seen from the outside looking in.

Just a reminder to keep things on-topic - this thread isn't about the merits of copy protection, DRM, secret codes, etc. It's about a community phenomenon in which large numbers of members protested an action by the site operator and, perhaps surprisingly, cause a change in policy.

In this case, Digg's own site mechanism gave the protestors the tools to get attention.

This also illustrates how Digg's design that lets one view items dugg by "friends" and digg them oneself can be manipulated. This was an extreme case in which the whole front page was full of protest articles, but it's not dissimilar to what happens on a smaller scale every day due to incestuous voting.